Recent reviews by opensleep

nekowater is atmospheric and sad, mostly. the ocean has reclaimed land, and a few girls have survived, and a cat.

Lovely Planet can feel like a casual game due to its simplistic game elements, but also can be quite hardcore due to the strictness of in-game requirements for a good score. the game walks a fine line between the two, and succeeds in both with what seems to be a pick-up-and-play game that also has serious depth. however, i found the core gameplay to be too simplistic for my liking and thus i can only very weakly recommend it.

6.5/10

undertale is a good game, but more accurately a good experience. several well-crafted moments and a large amount of easter eggs breath life and joy into the game, and though the game suffers from adherence to traditional RPG elements (combat, puzzles), it also makes fun of it, and remains quite enjoyable.

8/10

Life Is Strange has a rather plain story for a game so strongly based on its narrative content. its strengths in mood and setting are most strong during casual moments of downtime, but the main story drags and is resolved unsatisfactorily.

i cannot in good faith recommend this even though i partially enjoyed it, possibly because most of the game was average for only a few brief moments that were good, and a story that ended poorly.

2D platformer, with an emphasis on perfect execution at breakneck speed. the great level design allows the near-flawless controls and mechanics to shine, in what i think is the pinnacle of the platforming genre. though many levels can be passed easily, the ingenuity of the game shows by trying to beat the levels with a perfect score. but beware! getting a perfect score in the latter levels is quite hard and grindy, which might not be for everyone.

+++++ controls, mechanics, level design
++ pick up and play
++ user generated levels (you can make them too!)
++ beautiful artstyle is visualy clear calming
-- later stages are quite punishing
-- lots of grinding

get it! very much worth it even without discount.

a frantic rhythm based dungon crawler. imagine rouge-like bullet chess, but your only piece is massively overpowered and enemies are everywhere.

~ can be quite hard
+ nice music
++ simple mechanics but with deep strategies
++ lots of characters
++ lots of weapons and items

get it!

8/10

a thunderstorm rages outside as you explore your house alone that is seemingly haunted. but flipping through your family's scattered notes and things left around, memories and thoughts flash in and outyour mind. of ambivalent parents, disconnected friends, ones you've loved, and things never meant. but you linger onto these memories and melancholic thoughts, as they are so intrinsically part of you. an overwhelming and indescribable beauty looms over, as you walk into the next empty room.

a hauntingly beautiful game about love, nostalgia, and the loss of innocence,

tl;dr: great game, not worth 20$ but worth about 10$ and definitely worth your time. be careful if its your first "art game" (whatever that means to you), and dont play this game if you strongly dislike the culture it represents.

8.5/10

Suffers from what I call "the perninal problem of puzzle games", being that the problem space and possible operations are too well-defined; and thus the game becomes much too easy with a bit of brute force and common sense. The puzzles and its mechanics are well designed, but because of the aformentioned problem, about 70% of the puzzles I could solve without stopping at all.

The story is interesting, but the problem with the A.I. & consciousness narrative is that... there isn't really anything new one can say about the subject. Issues like this have been debated back and forth since the beginning of time (or at least Descartes/Hobbs), and the relatively shallow philisophy that the game provides only worsens things. That being said, topics like these are a part of what I study in school, so your experience may vary.

Also, this game makes me dizzy like no other despite being a fan of FPS games in general and despite turning on all of the anti-motion-sickness settings.

6.5/10

recommend if: you are interested in A.I. and other philosophy; if you are just looking for a puzzle game that is merely "good"

great concept / poor execution. the controls are horrendous, as you are often struggling to get your troops to move the way you want.
there seems to be two playstyles to the game, one where you plan out everything in advance, another where you pause/unpause as you react to the situation. the first relies on too much trial and error as map information is incomplete, and the second one is a nightmare because of the poor controls.

5/10

-MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD-

++++ this is a rare game whose story makes excellent usage of its medium. the story cannot be delivered with the same amount of power without the mechanics that are provided by video games.

+++ at some point throughout the game, your investigation shifts from the predetermined goal of solving the murder case, to understanding the story due to personal curiosity. this is executed brilliantly, and lends particularity well to the open ending of the game.

- the search mechanic is unintuitive (no searches on metadata) because it doesn't function as proper search engines do. because of this, the difficulty seems a bit artifical at times.

-- there are effectively two parts to the story: but the first is boring and the second is contrived.

-- a corollary of above: its hard to care about most of the characters because of the lame story.

-- for a game that mostly consists of watching interviews, the acting is quite bad. it doesn't fell like the actor has put effort into immersing herself into the role of her character, so her performance and delivery doesn't feel genuine at all. sometimes its hard to tell if her poor acting is intentional (because her character is lying) or just because.

A very interesting game that is critically flawed because of the of the poor content that the game mechanics heavily depends on.

6.5/10

would recommended if: you like story rich games, you are open to unusual game mechanics that aren't FUN, you really like Memento,